


Corpora Lutea

by doomedship



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-19 00:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16129832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: "You don't go down the garden path working out every little detail for something you're not interested in". Julia/David, future fic. Life decisions are made.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from. Please enjoy. And feel free to correct anything medical because ya girl knows nothing.

Like with all things, she doesn't bring it up delicately. He's gulping down a large glass of water at the time, which he promptly chokes on and spills the rest of on an expensive panelled sideboard.

She merely folds one leg over the other and watches steadily from her spot on the couch, patiently waiting for him to finish coughing and respond. He stares at her.

"What did you say?" he croaks.

She rolls her eyes. "I asked if you wanted more children," she says matter-of-factly. She gets up then and fetches a cloth from the kitchen to wipe the water off the sideboard before it ruins the vanish.

He then too disappears swiftly into the kitchen, leaving her frowning after him until he reappears, now with beer in hand. She eyes it with one eyebrow raised.

"Goodness. I suppose that answers that if the thought alone is driving you to drink," she says mildly. He looks pointedly at her.

"Julia, I don't think you can spring that sort of question on me out of the blue and not expect me to immediately reach for fortification," he says, shaking his head. He cracks the lid, takes a swig, then offers it to her. She takes it and watches him over the rim as she sips.

"So? What's the answer to my question?" she asks, sitting back down on her spot on the couch while he sits opposite her in the deep armchair he favours. He looks very intently at her for a long moment, like he's trying to coax the meaning behind her words out with sheer willpower, but she's inscrutable.

"Why did you ask it?" he asks.

"You're evading," she says disapprovingly.

"Julia, I need to know what kind of conversation we're having here. Why'd you ask?"

She rolls her eyes again. "Because I wanted to know the answer, obviously. And usually the fastest way to do that is to ask, although if you speak to half the blokes in my cabinet I suppose they'd probably favour convoluted intimidation and harassment. But I do try to avoid using that on you. Usually."

"I'm grateful," he says. He leans forward. "Are you asking me if I want to have children with you?"

"I'm asking if you want to have more children in general. Whether or not it's with me is irrelevant."

"Since you're the only woman I'm intending to sleep with for the foreseeable and hopefully unforeseeable future, I suspect it is a little relevant," he says, setting his beer down. He looks a little frazzled already.

"I want to know what you want."

She's pleased his implication is that he means to stay with her regardless, but she won't be distracted from her cause. "I'm not getting any younger, you know. We haven't got time to skirt around this issue for a few years. So I want to know if it's something you'll regret not having, if you stay with me."

It's delivered in a matter of fact way, almost astoundingly so, and David looks shocked. He gets up and walks around the coffee table, sitting down unceremoniously on it instead so that he is seated directly in front of her. 

He takes one of her hands in both of his while she waits patiently, surprising even herself with how calm she's being about all this, though the tension is building as he works through his answer in his head. After a false start or two, he finally speaks.

"I haven't thought about it even once since we've been together," he says. She lets out a huff of discontent.

"Yes, David, that's why I'm asking you to think about it _now_ ," she says impatiently. He raises his eyebrows.

"And you want an answer to that life-changing decision right away?"

"I'm not asking you to hand over your sperm sample in a syringe right now-" he raises his eyebrows suggestively and she ignores him "-but yes, I want your preliminary thoughts on the matter," she says crisply, as if she's talking to one of her aides about the congestion charge.

"Julia," he says, exasperated. "I've got two young kids. By anyone's standards that's a lot to handle already. And the life we both lead; would it be fair to bring a baby into that?"

"I'm not asking about the ethics of the scenario, or whether you think either of us could be Mary bloody Poppins. I'm asking what you actually want."

"Did you try for kids before? With Roger?"

She looks a bit surprised then, not expecting the tables to turn on her like that, and she takes a moment to consider her answer.

"No," she admits. "He would've, I expect, but I always said I didn't want them. Too busy. Didn't have any plans to slow down. But, you see, then it was- Roger... He wasn't exactly..."

"He didn't make you want children." David picks up the unspoken thread expertly, and the purse of her lips confirms it. She inclines her head and moves the conversation onward without further acknowledgement.

"So you have Ella and Charlie, and I've got a whole country to run. Is that a no?" she asks mildly, like she's talking about their dinner plans for the weekend and not their entire future.

"It's not a-" he pauses and presses his thumbs against his forehead. "I love being a dad. I love you. I would love any child we had more than anything," he admits, and Julia's eyes gleam as she hones in on the fact that they're finally getting to the heart of her question. "But I've honestly never even thought about us having a child, Julia."

"Because you thought I wouldn't want one? Or couldn’t have one?"

"Because I'm... happy. I don't feel like I'm missing anything."

She seems to relax then and he looks at her, surprised.

"Is that the answer you wanted, then? A no? You were just checking whether I was going to ask for something you weren't prepared to give?"

"No," she says reprovingly. "I wanted to hear that you were happy. But now you mention it, you've not actually answered my original question."

He rubs his hand idly up and down her forearm, lingering on the silky soft skin at her wrist. Her eyes flutter shut briefly, before reopening to meet his with just as much sharp determination. When she gets her teeth into something she is a terrier with her persistence.

"I need to think about it first," he says at last, standing up and drawing her up with him. He leans into her and nuzzles her neck. She smiles.

"Okay."

She allows the interval, turning her attention to far more physical forms of diversion instead, deciding it's all relevant to the subject at hand anyway.

.............

He does think about it, but he takes his time doing so, though to her credit she manages not to push the subject unduly. She waits impatiently for him to bring it up himself again, though on the fourth evening after their discussion she's just contemplating how to work up to another full frontal assault on the subject when he abruptly walks into the bedroom while she's getting ready for bed, his hair damp from the shower.

"How would you do your job with a newborn?" he asks, with no lead in whatsoever. It's an approach she appreciates.

"Well, David, it's 2018. Women need not be chained to the nursery cradling the babe anymore." She pulls an earring out of one ear, then the other.

"But the practicalities, Julia. You'd have to take at least some time off. You'd have to leave someone else in charge, and I think we can all agree you don't like giving anyone else an inch when it comes to work."

She glowers at him via the mirror on her dressing table, but can't really refute the point, as she finds the idea of ceding power about as appealing as chewing off her own arm. He doesn't see her glare, though, as he's started to pace behind her wearing only a towel around his hips. She decides to admire the view while she waits for him to work through everything that's on his mind. 

"And babies are hard work, Julia. When Ella was born, honest to God, it was like being hit by a truck. Then being run over by it. And then vomited on, a lot of times. And then when  _Charlie_ came along, Christ, there were two of them. It was like herding cats and riding a unicycle at the same time." 

She doesn't say anything; she won't deny that child-rearing  _does_ look like a colossal struggle, based on what she's seen amongst friends and family, and this was from a woman who had spent her adult life wrangling the only thing that was possibly more temperamental and over-sensitive than infants: male political egos. 

"Of course, I wasn't in the best place, when the kids were small," he continues over her shoulder,  sounding melancholic. "Vicky had to do most of the heavy lifting. Two kids, a mess of a husband and doing all the housework _and_ her job as well." 

"Well, if it helps, I'll be more than happy for you to do your penance for that now," she says, brushing her hair. "There's an almighty layer of grease on the kitchen cabinets that wants cleaning." It makes him laugh a bit, but he doesn't stop his pacing. 

"You'll be in the press solidly for at least nine months, taking into account all the gossip and speculation followed by the confirmation and the birth. And then you'll be the size of a house while trying to lead those idiots in cabinet - not to mention when the baby's actually born," he says, sounding more and more distracted. He reaches vaguely for the shirt he sleeps in, misses, and picks up her nightdress instead, which he stares at with distant eyes.

"When the baby's born," she says, finally turning around and laying her hairbrush down. There's a small smile on her face and his eyes snap to her in confusion before it sinks in and he realises what she is referring to.

"If," he says, lamely, but she's got what she needs. She knows that somewhere in that ramble of his, his mind switched over from not considering it a possibility at all to being something real. And something he wants.

"You don't go down the garden path working out every little detail for something you're not interested in, David," she says levelly. "I think you've finally answered my question."

He looks at her for a long moment, and it feels like this is one of those crucial moments where life goes one of two ways. 

"Maybe I am interested," he says firmly. "But I'm not asking for it. Just because I like the idea doesn't mean that I don't also like the idea of spending the rest of my life with you, without any of that," he says. He looks as deadly serious as a man in a towel holding a silk nightie ever could. "I'm not going to pressure you for it, not ever. I'd only ever want to if _you_ decided you wanted to, not just because you think it's a bonus I want from our life. I already have everything and more with you."

She is satisfied with his answer. 

"Good," she says, mildly. "Then we'll look at our options tomorrow." She reaches out to take her nightdress from him and shrugs her dressing gown from her shoulders. He is staring at her, either because of what she's just said by implication or because she's suddenly naked in front of him. She tugs the nightdress over her head and when she emerges he still looks glazed over, so she concludes it must be the former.

"I thought this was all hypothetical," he says slowly. "Are you telling me that you actually did want a baby all along?"

She shrugs. "It would have been inconsequential if I did and you didn't. I simply wanted to know your answer. I can see the pros and cons of both and I would have lived perfectly contently with whichever you gave."

"But your preference is for..."

"Trying for a child. Yes."

It strikes her when she says it how truly bizarre it all is. She can't quite believe that she's here, aged forty-one, the serving Prime Minister, quite seriously discussing creating an actual human life with her younger former PPO with whom she has shared several near-death experiences and at least ten salacious tabloid headlines. She wonders if the absurdity of it all is hitting him too when he remains silent for a very long time, a quizzical-slash-concerned expression on his face.

She's about to try and say something to salvage the mood when he abruptly pulls the towel from his waist altogether, hangs it over the bedpost and crosses over to her in a few long strides.

"Well then, we had better not waste any more time," he says, smoothing his hands over the black silk covering her body. "You said it yourself. You're not getting any younger."

She huffs her outrage at this insubordination, though she allows her eyes to roam appreciatively over his naked form before he encircles her tightly in his arms and kisses her. A slow, sly smile spreads across her face and he draws back when he feels it.

"What?" he asks warily.

"I'm not a doctor, David, but I'm fairly sure if we're interested in conception, timing is a rather important factor," she says. He looks nonplussed.

"What do you mean?"

"It means from now on you can't have all-hours access, so to speak," she says smugly. "By appointment only. Ovulation is required."

He looks aghast. "You're not serious," he groans, and she smirks. "Is it too late to change my answer?"

She leans in and brushes her lips against his, nipping slightly as she draws back.

"Since it's going to be a while before it happens, perhaps one last hurrah before we shut the gates, hm?" she says, and his eyes light up.

"Now we're talking, Prime Minister."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She has a suspicion she's already started running away with herself, her mind bringing up all kinds of fantasies about blue-eyed babies and David with a white blanket over his shoulder."

She's not one for wasting time and most of the population hasn't even reached their desk before she has them booked in for a consultation the same day with renowned Harley Street fertility expert, Dr Richard. M. Ryder.

"You're joking," David says when she tells him. "Dr Dick Ryder? That's his actual name?"

She glares at him and warns him to behave, because Dr Ryder usually comes with a two-month waiting list. David throws his hands in the air but he's wisecracking all the way down to the waiting car that evening.

Julia made the booking herself, no longer trusting anyone (except him, and then only when he behaves) with anything personal and/or related to her security. She definitely, definitely doesn't want anyone getting wind of where they're going tonight, since the press has only just got bored of plastering her face on the tabloid covers in increasingly obscene positions, and speculating about whether David’s in it for the sex or the money. She is ultra-cautious with her private life as a result.

She's even been funny about her aides dealing with their food shopping these days, in case one of them goes to the Daily Mail to reveal her liking for embarrassingly childish ice cream, or ludicrously expensive eggs from Waitrose ("they're blue, and I like them," she says when confronted). David’s just about managed to talk her down from that stance, since neither of them really has the time to deal with doing their own groceries. He's not working as a PPO anymore; they unanimously decided after Last Time that it would be unwise for him to go back to it, but he's almost as busy as she is in his new job anyway.

_"You know this means," he tells her pointedly as he hands in his request for departmental change. "You'll be my last ever principal, and my career will have ended in a terrific blaze of disaster."_

_"Hm," she responds, not having considered that. "Well it can only get better then, can't it? Not much chance of you blowing anything up from permanent desk duty."_

_He glares at her then; she has been teasing him for days that she’s going to insist Anne Sampson station him exclusively in an office role to make sure he is safe at all times. She doesn’t, of course, and he's instead been transferred into counterterrorism investigation with Sharma and his team, which is a good fit for him._

_"Stops him going rogue and running his own investigations, anyway," Sharma grumbles when the change is made known. Julia stifles a smile at that, and thanks Sharma for helping arrange the transfer._

So David is no longer out in someone else's car or hotel room keeping watch day and all night, and given how their relationship started she's somewhat relieved by that. Not that she thinks he'd get up to anything again, not after all the trouble it's caused him, and besides. Most politicians look like Roger Penhaligon rather than her, and she gathers Roger isn’t quite David’s type. But in any case, she much prefers having him all to herself.

He's been making progress in many months of dedicated therapy too. Slow progress, and truth be told he loathes every second of it, which makes it all the more admirable that he still turns up religiously each week and talks through his issues with the kind-faced therapist assigned to him. She tells him that of all the things she’s seen him do, this is by far the bravest. He still has bad nights and probably always will, but he's never come anywhere close to his trauma manifesting the way it once did with her in a lonely hotel room. It took him months with her before he would stay the whole night beside her, for obvious reasons, and though she missed his presence every time she woke up and found him gone she never pushed – again, for obvious reasons. Nowadays, he makes it through almost every night by her side without a sound now, and he's able to turn down his hyper-awareness more easily, though old habits die hard.

"It's a better system," he says firmly, as he changes their intruder alarm for the fourth time in eighteen months. She rolls her eyes and lets him get on with it. She might be Prime Minister but even she knows not to get between him and his security measures.

So that's how they end up walking hand in hand to a waiting black BMW, driven by a quiet, measured man called Tony, whom she now grudgingly accepts can be trusted not to spill their secrets (a mere eleven and a half months after he was assigned to them).

She can tell, though, that David is a bit twitchy about the visit to Dr Ryder, because he keeps fidgeting with his shirt collar, and after the initial hilarity over Dr Ryder's serendipitous name, he takes on a brooding, hunched demeanour instead, staring out of the tinted window. She entwines her fingers in his across the seats and looks at him expectantly.

"Something the matter?" she asks, and he grunts something unintelligible in response, still focusing on the window. She purses her lips and tugs on his hand until he looks at her reluctantly.

"We don't have to go," she says, her voice measured. Inwardly, her heart has taken up a bit of a double-time two-step, which is annoying because she insisted to herself that she was going be cool headed and sensible about this whole thing. Instead she has a suspicion she's already started running away with herself, her mind bringing up all kinds of fantasies about blue-eyed babies and David with a white blanket over his shoulder. She tells herself to get a grip, because he might well be about to bring all of this to a grinding halt, as he has a right to, and she is absolutely determined to accept that with good grace. "If you've changed your mind..."

He looks at her, frowning.

"It's not that," he says at last, and she feels a little jolt of relief which in turn makes her feel a bit guilty, because of how far she's already letting herself fall into her fantasy.

"So what is it?" she asks, frowning. "You don't look particularly keen to keep this appointment. In fact, you look quite a lot like Charlie did when we took him to the dentist."

He snorts at that and gives her hand a squeeze, which reassures her.

"I don't really like doctors," he blurts out. She blinks for a second and then attempts to cover her smile.

"But you once wanted to be one," she says, unable to hold back a chuckle. He sighs.

"That doesn't mean I like seeing them. As a patient. What if he asks awkward questions?"

"Well, I'm fairly sure he will. That's more or less his job. We'll just have to grit our teeth and get through it."

He sighs again, and she strokes the back of his hand comfortingly all the rest of the way to the clinic, relieved it's not something more serious. She feels an unbidden wave of anticipation spring up in her as they pull over in front of the smart double doors.

In the end it is a little awkward, and there are very personal questions, but David's intense fear of being asked to produce anything in a cup are fortunately not materialised. However, he is told that he'll have to provide one in the clinic some time next week, and once again she has to hide her grin behind her hand at the look on his face. She does most of the answering so he doesn't have to, and with her usual blunt precision. 

She'll be having a raft of tests too, but she's relatively immune to embarrassment at this point. Half a lifetime of public service will do that to you. Besides, Dr Ryder is the picture of discretion and delicacy, and is just the right amount of positive about their prospects, which explains the extortionate fee he charges for these consultations.

They leave the clinic hand in hand with a game plan of sorts. They have decided against any immediate fertility treatment in the hope of achieving this the old-fashioned way. Dr Ryder laid out the odds for them: not very good, but it's not impossible. She glances at David as their options are laid out and he seems happier with the no-needles option, but privately Julia has a blossoming sense of doubt about that. Still, she thinks it will probably be fun to try it like this anyway, so she is happy to give it a go. If the stars align just right, maybe they'll be in luck.

When they reach the sanctum of home again he seems to relax, so she takes the opportunity to probe him further.

"I'm forty-one, it's not likely to happen this way, you know," she says casually. He frowns.

"If Bible-obsessed American nutjobs can to manage to pop out twenty kids well into old age, it stands to reason that you could produce one in your forties," he says. She snorts and squeezes his hand.

"You have been watching entirely too much MTV," she comments dryly.

"Also possible," he says, drawing her closer. He drops his head to nuzzle her ear and she recognises the persuasive brush of his lips on her skin.

"You were there when Dr Ryder told us about how to increase chances of conception, weren't you?" she asks him, eyes closed and head tilted ack. He groans against her neck.

"For the purposes of this activity, I was not," he says, but he reluctantly draws back. He eyes her reproachfully. "Honestly, when you're young you spend your life not having sex in case you get someone pregnant, and now I'm not having sex in case I _don't_ get you pregnant?"

"That's about the sum of it. Only I certainly don't believe you ever avoided having sex because of that when you were young."

He cocks his head to one side and smiles mischievously. She's quite tempted to give in to him already but she's got her mind set on this now and she won’t be swayed. They're on a schedule now, and it all depends on when her basal body temperature hits the sweet spot according to the helpful chart Dr Ryder left with them. And as for David, he is to stockpile everything he's got until then. He does not appreciate her stern warning not to cheat on his own when she's not looking.

"Never in my life did I imagine I'd have the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom warning me not to get my rocks off on my own," he grumbles as they tumble into bed, Julia adopting her usual position half sprawled on his chest with one of her legs flung between his.

"Well, be thankful it's not my predecessor doing so," she says helpfully, patting his chest. He grimaces at her bringing John Vosler's overweight spectre into their marital bed (or should that be unmarital, she muses).

"If we have a child it'll be a bastard," she says, thinking out loud. He stiffens underneath her.

"Love," he says, glancing down at her. "You're not trying to assess my feelings on that too, are you? Because it's a lot for one man to take in in a week."

"No," she says, and she's actually not. She really has no interest in going through the theatre of another wedding, another public spectacle, and she's pretty sure he doesn't either. He more or less confirms that by exhaling loudly.

"Good," he says, relaxing down into the mattress. "Not that it doesn't sound lovely and all..."

"Oh, don't lie, we both know I'd make a perfectly terrible bride and you wouldn't do much better in a morning suit."

"Perhaps someday," he says, and he sounds almost bashful, so she looks up at him and laughs, kissing his cheek. Marriage isn't particularly high up her list of priorities, but he is, and she feels a rush of warmth as she assesses all that she already has. It is a reassuring realisation, because even if she still can't shake the feeling that maybe this venture of theirs is doomed from the start, at least if she has him at the end of it then how bad can it really be?

Over the next weeks they're characteristically vigorous in their preparation, and in their endeavours to fulfil the objective that was assigned to them. As soon as Julia’s body temperature rises, ascertained by the thermometer which now lives beside the bed, and she's announced the state of her mucus gives every conceivable sign that she's in the right point in her cycle, they return to the blissful activities which began their relationship in the first place. She’s pleased to note they perform with every bit as much gusto as then, too. For David, spoiled by their always healthy sex life, the relief is evidently palpable. She is rather pleased that her designs have, if nothing else, brought them the best sex they can remember (only narrowly though, she reasons, since it's always been pretty amazing).

Dr Ryder's test results come in and are as positive as they could be: there's no inherent reason why their efforts shouldn't work. David is young and healthy and his sperm count is perfectly adequate. And she, well, she is clearly well past perfect childbearing age, there’s no getting around it. But there is at least no big red mark on her test results saying she will never be able to do this. She tries not to get bogged down in percentages and probabilities.

.....

When she gets her period that month, though, she's far more disappointed than she had expected to be. Impressively, he seems to be able to tell exactly what's happened the second he walks into the living room on that day.

"I'm good, love, but it's a stretch even for me to put a bun in the oven that quickly," he says, sitting down beside her. She looks up, surprised.

"I might have been snooping in your fertility calendar on your phone when you're not looking," he explains, smiling like a naughty schoolboy. It eases some of the regret currently weighing her down.

"That phone has extremely important state information on it," she says indignantly.

"Well, best not leave it unlocked when you're done with the sudoku, then," he says. She swats him on the shoulder and then leans her head on it heavily.

"I don't do that," she grumbles. Then she sighs. "Of course I knew it was going to happen, on the first run, but I'm still disappointed," she admits. He squeezes her shoulder.

"That's natural, love," he says gently. "You're getting used to wanting it to happen. It makes sense that you're starting to get your hopes up."

She gets over it in a few days, not usually one to dwell, and she moves on swiftly to the next phase of the plan. She's a born doer, so she's quickly back to scheduling, analysing and blending revolting smoothies which are supposed to increase fertility. Unfortunately for him, she finds a recipe for boosting male fertility too, and stands over him each morning with hands on hips as he chokes a cup of it down.

"God help the kid," he gasps after enduring a serving of something dark green and reeking of raw soggy vegetables. "If this is the care it can expect."

She merely smiles primly and dismisses him to his day's duties.

For all her efforts, though, her period returns faithfully the next month, and the next. She gets an unpleasant leap of hope the month after when she's late, only for it to result in disappointment yet again when it arrives, simply a week late.

"I don't think this is going to happen," she confesses one night, staring at her knees. "I think I've left it too late, David."

He crouches in front of her and holds her hands, his face an echo of her sorrow because he always hates to see her suffer.

"We'll go back to Dr Ryder," he promises her gently. "No matter how many cups I have to do it into."

She laughs a watery laugh at that and lets him scoop her from couch and carry her to bed. He makes love to her very slowly and tenderly that night, even though it's not on her schedule. She's glad he does, and it's actually quite the relief to be doing it because they want to instead of because a reminder on her phone tells them they have to.

She sets up another session at the clinic and they attend together, just like before. Dr Ryder is sympathetic, and makes all the expected noises. He gives them advice they already know about boosting their chances, then gently raises the option of IVF once more. He says, though, that he wouldn't normally suggest it before six months of trying, though due to the "circumstances" (she knows this translates to "your age") it wouldn't be unreasonable to go straight to it.

After some discussion they set a date in three months to start fertility treatment if nothing has happened by then. Julia leaves feeling a bit more in control, even if that's a false security given the odds haven't changed at all since they walked into the clinic. Her body is still traitorously careening towards the death of biological possibility.

The routine continues; Julia monitors herself and counts the weeks and ticks off days on the calendar. She exercises and eats a mountain of oats and vegetables and gives up drinking. David is harder to pull in line in that respect but she is well aware he's putting in a very great effort for this too. If nothing else he is ensuring she doesn't go completely crazy in her endeavours, and in so doing ensures the country retains a competent Prime Minister. Granted, it's survived plenty of incompetent ones before, but she still thinks he really ought to be given some kind of medal for his immense public service.

One month and one week later, Julia is late again. She's learnt her lesson this time and tries not to pay the fact any attention, though it's difficult for her not to obsess. Luckily, a scandal involving the Secretary of State for Environment, his secretary and a stolen London bus means she is busy in crisis management mode and has less time for thinking about what's happening, or not happening, in her uterus.

Two weeks pass since the red-dotted date on her calendar and halfway through that she abruptly gives up caffeine just in case, which sort of feels like dying, but she powers through on deeply ineffectual herbal tea instead. She is putting off mentioning anything to David, because she doesn't want to create false hope for him as well as her, and he's now so used to the weird changes in her diet that he doesn't question the absence of a pot of coffee in the morning.

On day seventeen, a crisp day in mid-September, she decides it’s time to risk a pregnancy test, which of course she purchases online and has sent to a collection point under a false name instead of to her home address. She can't be seen strolling into Boots for pregnancy tests and she can't risk a batch of them being sent to 10 Downing Street either. It's probably not a common problem for Downing Street residents, what with them being almost exclusively male, but the last thing she wants is a mocking headline about her grasping desperately for the last chance motherhood saloon.

It's about half past five in the evening and she's got a mountain of paperwork that needs her attention but she can't concentrate until she's done this. She holes herself up in the bathroom and lays out one, two, three sticks, frowning hard at them as if her predicament is all their fault. Finally, she takes one test, pees on the stick and then lays it out. She turns her back on it and takes the others while she's waiting on the first.

She hates this feeling of helplessness. It's not one she's used to, since she's more or less the most powerful person in the country and she can usually achieve things she wants to by barking orders or, when necessary, scheming behind closed doors. But in this, in her ability to do what thousands of ill-advised teenagers inadvertently achieve in their bedrooms with parents conveniently absent, she has reached the end of her power. She can force obstinate backbenchers to obey her. She can even haul the country out of economic recession. She can't force her body to produce a viable egg and then harbour it safely for nine months, no matter how she tries.

The sound of the front door clicking shut makes her jump and she springs to her feet guiltily before she gets a hold of herself, smoothing down her jacket. She finishes counting down and whirls around to pick up the first test, ignoring the sudden tremor in her hands as she looks at it.

The little indicator window on the three plastic tests indicates that she might yet compete with those unfortunate teenagers.  The only question is how long she can keep this up.

.....

She tells David there and then, because even though she is the ultimate at keeping secrets she has come to learn that it tends not to have the best effect on her relationships if she does so. Besides, the ball of cells currently implanted in the wall of her uterus is half him, and she thinks he ought to know that.

He's in a good mood, a breakthrough made on a case they've been wrestling with for some weeks. When he sees her emerging from the bathroom his eyes light up and he crosses the room quickly to sweep her into his arms and kiss her thoroughly. She feels a fluttering in her stomach at the thought of what she's going to tell him. But as she opens her mouth she finds words desert her; instead of joy she feels a coiling tendril of fear. She doesn't think it's possible that she could really have this too, not when she already has everything else.

"Love? What's wrong?" He asks her, concerned when she doesn't respond for too long. She swallows and glances behind her at the bathroom door before returning her gaze to him. She sees the shift in his face when he catches on, but he waits for her to speak, which she doesn't blame him for. This is too important to leap to any conclusions.

"It was positive," she says, low and hushed. He looks at her searchingly for a long moment, still holding her forearms. He runs his arms up her arms and pulls her into his embrace.

"Congratulations," he says softly. She can feel his heart beating powerfully against her cheek. She thinks about the tiny heart she hopes is already forming, getting ready to beat in a matter of days. She starts to cry, which alarms him, but not too much since he's been here twice before. Albeit in different circumstances, but at least he's prepared for the unexpected and alarming, so he just soothes her gently until she gets a hold of herself again.

.....

She feels a bit like she's taken on a new identity as an eggshell, as if she should immediately hand in her resignation, purchase some industrial bubble wrap and go into hiding lest she dislodge the fragile new resident inside her. However, she is a ferociously logical woman and she beats down her fear to enable her to carry on and go into work day in, day out, with nobody noticing anything is amiss.

It gets a bit harder to do when the nausea arrives with a vengeance in the next week. She has to abandon a meeting with the Canadian Prime Minister on account of being trapped in her private bathroom unable to stand up without having to vomit. She has to allow her deputy to attend in her stead, which looks terrible to the rest of the country and also possibly might have spawned a Canadian grudge for the next few years. As she's sitting there on the tiles she is suddenly struck with the absurdity, and the selfishness, which she has displayed. What is she thinking, doing this? She is the last person on earth who should be reproducing, given that she's already more or less responsible for the wellbeing of every single baby in the country. Every hospital, school and benefits payment under her power, and yet here she is eschewing her duties because she wants one of her very own. 

When the nausea passes, though, she's able to move past the feeling of utter panic that she's made a terrible mistake. In any event, it's far too late to change course now, so the only option is to Winston Churchill and keep buggering on.

David is a rock, as she knew he would be. He is tactful enough not to show much emotion about the whole thing beyond gentle warmth and positivity. He knows his excitement would only multiply her terror that something will go wrong.

Now there's no need for a schedule they return to making love when the mood strikes them, but Julia realises there's a subtle difference. There's a reverence between them that wasn't there before and as she cradles his head afterwards she sort of begs a god she's always been ambivalent about not to take this away from them.

By the next week, she's had to rush out of rooms so many times her special advisor must be an actual halfwit if he doesn't realise what's going on. But then, he is a plummy public schoolboy like they always are, and she doesn't think he's particularly clued in on women's issues. Nor in fact does she think that he, or most of her party, really think about her in particularly female terms, a fact which a few weeks ago she would have been pleased about but now she just wants to shout at them something along the lines of " _I have a tiny human growing in my uterus and it's giving me hell, cut me some slack_."

She doesn't, of course, and soldiers on, if anything becoming more aggressive and short-tempered with her staff. So much for cuddly maternal feelings, she thinks.

At six weeks she's due to visit Copeview Maternity Ward which has recently been rated ‘outstanding’ and has received funding to open a new wing. She winces at the irony of it all when her aide informs her it's coming up. Though she's handed a welcome speech already prepped and full of the necessary gratitude and appreciation, she feels thrown by the visit. She walks through the ward speaking to row on row of new mothers and it feels surreal, unable to stop picturing herself in one of those starched white beds. Well, perhaps not exactly one of those, since it wouldn't do for the actual Prime Minister to be going through labour in a public ward, though she expects the press will criticise her whether she does or not. She shakes herself when she realises her train of thought is taking her a long way down the road she's not supposed to be thinking about - the one where she makes it to full term, and ends up right where these women are.

She thinks she does an admirable job looking only politely interested in the babies thrust at her, and smiles with the appropriate amount of appreciation at the doctors and nurses as she shakes their hands and tells them what a fine job they do.

The reality is she sort of wants to cling to their white coats and scrubs and beg them to tell her everything will be okay, and to desperately ask the mothers if it's worth it in the end. She doesn't, of course, and she walks serenely down to her waiting car where she sits behind Gavin and looks pensively out the window.

On the car ride back to Downing Street, Julia begins to bleed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It is a slow process, like the healing over of a wound, and she thinks that though her scars will not show to the world like his do, they are marked just as meaningfully for all they have lost."

She's wearing a dark suit so it doesn't show, but ten minutes from Downing Street she's acutely aware something is wrong. The sharp pain low in her belly, whose faint earlier twinges she had dismissed as merely part of the uncomfortable package of early pregnancy, she realises now is damning. Even she can't manage to conceal the alarm and the pain and her PPO is swiftly on high alert when she can't hold back her stifled cry after the car jerks to a halt in traffic.

"Is everything all right, Ma'am?" he asks. It's a strange time, she thinks, to notice how his accent is very, very Welsh, but she does so anyway. _Not much like David_ , she thinks dazedly, and it's almost like she's suddenly gone numb, unable to construct a coherent thought. It is not so much the physical, which is bad, but certainly not the worst she has ever felt (she has survived an IED going off right next to her, after all), but rather the rapidly expanding wasteland of devastation which she feels spreading out deep within her because of what she has no doubt is happening.

"Yes," she manages to choke out as the car rolls to a final stop near the guarded entrance to Downing Street. Automatically, she levers herself out of her seat, dimly praying that there's nothing to show for her struggle on the white leather under her as she does so. Gavin helps her out and shoots her a very concerned look when she grimaces and clutches her bag so tightly her knuckles go white, but she merely shakes her head and tells him to get her inside. Mercifully, he asks no questions. 

She manages not to buckle or double over, leaning on Gavin’s arm more than she likes to, but she can feel her eyes welling with traitorous tears as she makes it safely into her private rooms at least. She dismisses Gavin as quickly as he will allow, insisting that she is fine and it is a personal matter, although her bitter heart screams that she is not fine. When she is alone she heads straight for the nearest bathroom where she viciously yanks her bottoms down to confirm what she already knows. The damning red is still a sucker punch to the gut that leaves her gasping with silent sobs as she hunches over on herself.

"Julia?" David calls unexpectedly, his voice just outside the bathroom. Julia jumps, realises it’s him and shuts her eyes, and she doesn't know whether she's immensely relieved or filled with utter dread that he's home early, because part of her wants to deal with this alone, to clean it up and sort it out by herself the way she would with any crisis in government. She is Julia Montague, and there has never been a problem she hasn't been able to resolve with a bit of resolve. 

More than that, though, she's not sure she wants him to see her like this, broken and defeated, when he’s always known her to be so strong and unassailable, no matter who’s out to get her.

But this isn't a crisis in Westminster, she knows; it's a crisis in the very heart of her, of them, and he’s got a right to know.

Reluctantly, she unlocks the bathroom door and steps out slowly. He sees her wan face and her rigid posture, hands clenched like misshapen claws in front of her stomach and he reaches out for her in an instant. 

"What's happened?" he asks, his voice low and gentle, and the sorrow blossoming in his eyes says he already knows. Julia's face scrunches up as she's hit with another sharp pain through her belly and she can't speak, can only clutch the front of his shirt as she shakes with unshed tears and pent-up fury. She _can't_ make it final by saying it aloud, can’t kill off the dream she had of him being by her side as she brought their child into the world instead of next to her as she loses it.

But there’s nothing anyone can do, and it doesn't take Dr Ryder to explain to him what's wrong.

“Oh, love.” He holds her tightly to him and rocks her, and finally she lets herself crumble, and when she's stopped crying he helps her into the bigger bathroom and runs the taps in the bath while he calls Dr Ryder's personal line to ask what they should do. The man is sympathetic and kindly, she can hear, but he admits there's nothing they can do; if it’s happening, it’s happening, and no force on earth can stop it. She’s only six weeks in and the risks of miscarriage are highest up to that point, and at Julia's age... David takes the call out of the bathroom then, and returns a few minutes later with a gentle touch. 

Julia doesn't bother to look up from her spot on the loo seat. She already knows it's futile; her traitorous body has not managed to cling onto that tiny, implausible life which she had already come to love with a ferocity only matched by her feelings for the other half of its origin. 

"Love," he says gently, taking her hands. Dully she looks up at him, meets his anguished, tender eyes, and she can't bear it. She looks away.

"Love," he says again, and she has to look back, the silence between them too weighty to leave hanging. "We will get through this. It's not your fault, and I love you no matter what," he says. It is of course exactly what he is supposed to say, and he is right to say it because even though she's intelligent and logical to a fault, the voices in her head are telling her she's failed, asking what kind of woman can't protect her only child, that if she had just slowed down a bit maybe this would never have happened.

"It is not your fault," he repeats emphatically, and then she wonders if he can hear her voices too.

The look in his eyes makes her own well up again as she nods and tries not to let the floodgates holding back the tidal wave of her grief open.

The tub is full and hot and the room fills quickly with steam, and David undresses her gently. It should add up to the most sensual of scenarios, she thinks, but it's as far from that as a stone-cold murder scene would be. Which, she thinks sadly as he draws her trousers and underwear down, it almost is.

_Not your fault_ , reminds the David-voice which fortunately also lives in her head, and reluctantly Julia adjusts the comparison to a terrible road accident instead of a murder scene. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn’t do much to comfort her.

She's lucky David is who he is, because he doesn't even bat an eyelid at the blood and gore, and removes the messy clothing to deal with later before helping her into the hot bath. Why would he, she supposes, when he's seen plenty worse than this? Seen friends die, seen _her_ die, and had half his body shattered along the way. But she knows this is a unique kind of agony for them both anyway, no matter how hardened they both might be, and she hates herself a little for carving another line to his long, long list of traumas.

"I'm sorry," she says heavily, at last. The pain has subsided, or at least the heat of her bath is strong enough to distract from it. He is sitting beside it on a small stool Charlie usually uses to reach the bathroom shelf. He's grasping one of her hands tightly over the edge of the tub. At her words, his eyes flick sharply to him.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," be begins fiercely, but she shakes her head.

"Not... not for losing it. For starting all of this."

He looks deeply pained as she says that and shakes his head wordlessly. She wonders if he's going to condemn her, to admit he wishes she'd never raised this fool's hope at all, and stares numbly at the slightly murky water around her.

"Julia, I have never regretted a single day that I've spent with you," he says in a low voice. "Even the worst of them. Don't you know by now that I will _always_ choose to be right beside you?"

She smiles a bit, recognising her quiet hopeful words from all that time ago. Fitting that he should raise them when all her hope is lost, her body betraying her as it rejects the prospect of a longed-for baby with her hair and David's bright blue eyes.

"Yes, I know that," she responds softly. He squeezes her hand, and she looks down at it sadly. In her mind that morning she had pictured him holding her hand as their child was born; now instead he’s holding it as she convulses through the pain of seeing it slip away to its inevitable end.

The rest of the evening is spent waiting out the pain. He hands her painkillers and hot water bottles and sits with her wrapped up on the couch in his jumper and some heavy-duty pads to soak up the tragedy. He's under strict instructions from Dr Ryder to monitor her bleeding and her pulse and whisk her to hospital the moment any of it becomes alarming, which is more than undignified for her but she is too tired to protest, and for once she lets him lead.

They spend the whole night between the couch and the bathroom, and she is exhausted and drained by the early hours. Her mind conjures up the image of Charlie’s favourite teddy after Ella tore it and all the stuffing came out, and she wonders if she'll always feel this way. She wonders then whether even the press would have the gall to mock her as she is now, sitting slumped on the toilet at four in the morning while her body wages the cruellest of wars upon her.

He calls them both in sick when seven o'clock rolls around. She hears him roughly snapping at one of her aides, and possibly a secretary of state or two, telling them to deal with her work for the rest of the week because _she_ certainly won't be doing it while _he's_ got anything to say about it. She wonders vaguely who's going to do her speech to the UN climate summit that afternoon, but can’t muster up the will to care about rising sea levels when her own hCG levels are already starting their steady decline.

David comes back into the bathroom and rubs her back, asking if she wants anything, but they both know he is powerless to grant her only wish. She feels numb with the injustice of it all, that she has been robbed of this, robbed of having something so completely innocent amidst all the guilt of her life.

"I don't know if I can go through this again," she says, and he draws in a long breath.

"You don't have to," he says softly. "Your choice, love. It's always been."

Later that morning she is finally able to doze, curled up with her head in his lap on the couch. He stays awake, watching over her, and whenever she drifts back awake he's still there, blue eyes wide open, hand holding hers.

It is only the start of a long week of pain and constant reminders of what she's lost. But she gradually starts to feel more like herself again, partly because she has to when the country and her party starts speculating she's no longer fit for the job. Apart from anything else she is determined not to give Roger this fuel for a no-confidence vote, so she forces herself to start running cabinet meetings and attending parliament again, far sooner than David wants but reluctantly he has to concede when she threatens to have him transferred to traffic patrol for the rest of his life if he tries to stop her going into work.

Time passes, and Julia starts to come to terms with her loss. It is a slow process, like the healing over of a wound, and she thinks that though her scars will not show to the world like his do, they are marked just as meaningfully for all they have lost. 

For weeks, he demonstrates impressive restraint, asking nothing physical of her until it becomes annoying how chaste and cautious he is being and she breaks the long impasse by sternly telling him off wearing nothing but a towel.

"I'm still not the Queen, despite my best efforts" she snaps, hands on hips. "You _are_ allowed to touch me."

He looks startled, deer-in-headlights confused, then he breaks into astonished laughter at her. He wraps her in his arms and spins her around to deposit her unceremoniously on the bed where he pins her down and promptly does things to her that definitely shouldn't be spoken of in the same sentence as the Queen. Her towel is forgotten on the floor. 

They start sleeping together regularly again after that, and it inevitably raises the spectre of what they had been doing that for not too many weeks ago. He notices that at no point does she go back on any kind of contraception, and she doesn't ask him to either.

"Love, I know you said you didn't want to try again, but have you changed your mind?" he finally asks her, one night after they've had Ella and Charlie round and she's spent all evening reading Harry Potter in a den she's let them build out of her bedclothes in the living room. It's difficult not to see the longing in his eyes. 

She doesn't answer for a while, but when she looks up at him again it's the same expression she has when she goes into battle each morning at Westminster.

"Yes."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The only conclusion that can be drawn is of course that the Prime Minister, 42, is having entirely too much hot late-night sex with her former PPO, David Budd, 34."

It's not a fairy story and she doesn't get pregnant there and then, triumphantly returning from loss and grief to get everything she ever wanted in one neat pink or blue package. She finds that life tends not to work like that.

Instead it’s four long months of frustration and despair, and soul seeking conversations with Dr Ryder (he's expecting his fourth child with his wife himself that month, and Julia tries not to hate him). She's not quite as militant this time around, not now she knows how much it hurts to get so invested, only to see it all come to nothing. There's a weariness about the process too, and in the end when Dr Ryder suggests it, they decide to try IVF. She's just young enough that it's worth trying now, before her fertility drops off the cliff altogether.

It's awkward keeping all of it hushed up, and there's an increasing number of people who could sell their story if they wanted to, but fortunately Dr Ryder's team is discreet and though she checks hawkishly each day, the extent of the press coverage about her is the Guardian branding her the end of free speech and the Daily Mail wondering if she's had a boob job.

She starts injecting, injecting, injecting all these things that try so desperately to wind back the clock and bring her back within the realms of possibility to have what she’s ten years late in trying for. As she stands there with her syringe each morning, she feels like she’s injecting hope, and wonders if it’s an artifice that’s going to tear her apart again in the end.

In a few weeks, they are back in the clinic, waiting for some doctors instead of God to pick out the eggs and sperm and choose how they will meet, pushing them together in a petri dish behind smooth white doors. She marvels at the clinical precision of it all, and before she knows it having a catheter inserted into her cervix and God knows, it's not quite as pleasant a means of getting pregnant as the last time. But it's the best, and probably last, chance she has of doing this.

Two more terrible weeks of waiting and wondering follow, everyone tiptoeing around her because she's become so short tempered as to shout at Louis the intern for wearing shoes the wrong shade of black. The shoes in question are in fact brown, but she stands by her statement and no-one dares to contradict her. Then later, the whole room seems to drop several degrees when the ever hapless Rob cheerfully asks her why she's been acting like a bomb about to go off, and everyone stops what they're doing and gapes. Rob realises the incredible faux pas and tries to scramble it back, but Julia merely snarls at him to fuck off and find someone else to piss off, or he'd be spending the rest of his career doing waste disposal budgets in Swindon before the day was out.

David is understanding, but she knows she's been pushing him away and he doesn't like it. Which is fair enough. But she can't help it; it's like the more desperately she needs him the less able she feels to actually be around him, too afraid of shouldering the combined weight of their hope and fear.

He gets fed up after a few days of being held at arm's length and impatiently calls her out on it, for being distant and cold and unfair when he's just as invested in this as her. It's a face off across the kitchen counter and he's looking frustrated, still dressed in his smart work suit and tie and running a hand through his already distressed hair. She doesn't mean to be prickly but it escalates into a row, and when she gets her hackles up, she can never get them down without a fight.

"I'm sorry, when was the last time you tried to keep a little bundle of cells attached to your person, David?" she shouts, fairly absurdly. "Do you know how it feels, to be so close to having something so precious only to feel it slip away from you while all you can do is _watch_?"

The silence that follows is damning. 

"Yeah, I do, I know that feeling pretty fucking well," he says angrily, and there's another heavy pause. Julia knows she has crossed a line; of course he knows how that feels. He has been in the army and he has been with her, and he has lost and lost and lost again. She absorbs the stab of self-recrimination as she realises she has been a selfish bitch to pretend she's the only one with feelings in the room.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I didn't mean... Of course you know," she says, contrition running through her. She presses a hand to her forehead. "I'm sorry, David. I know I've pushed you away. I just don't know how to be around you when there's so much hanging over us. I feel... I feel like I'm about to face a final judgment over whether I deserve to keep you," she confesses. 

"I'm not going anywhere," he says quietly, anger fading as fast as it rose. "Whatever the test says, whatever happens next, I'm still going to be here. Just like I always meant to be. Nothing has changed how I feel about you, Julia."

She looks at him then and more or less caves in, crossing the kitchen so she can burrow herself into his shirt as if she can hide there and not have to face the sickening knowledge that tomorrow, she'll be going to the clinic to confirm once and for all whether the cycle has been successful.

He holds her quietly and then later, they shower together, and he leans her against the glass panels and makes her gasp and cry out until she has a blissful moment where she can't think about anything other than how good it feels. She desperately wishes he could have made that moment last until at least ten thirty the following morning, when they were booked in to see Dr Ryder, so she could have some piece from her plaguing worries, but even he's not quite that good.

.....

Waiting for the results is agony. She hasn't done a home test because she doesn't think she can bear it and she really wants someone else to be in control of it all this time, possibly for the first time in her life.

She feels like she might throw up when they wait for three, five, seven minutes for Dr Ryder to return. David is sitting steadfastly in his chair, leaning on his knees with his hands steepled. She, on the other hand, is pacing the smart consultation room with increasingly agitated steps, to the point where David grabs her hand as she passes him by for the fortieth time and and begs her to sit down.

She sighs and complies, but bounces her leg frantically instead and earns herself an exasperated look from him.

Mercifully, Dr Ryder comes back after nine minutes and Julia almost jumps out of her skin. He gives nothing away as he sits down in his own chair and faces them with a small ream of paperwork.

"Well, Prime Minister," he says. She can hear her own heart pounding. "It's good news. The IVF cycle has been a success."

Julia's mouth opens and a choked gasp falls from her. Her gaze flies to David, who is reaching for her hand with astonished, joyous tears in his eyes.

She's tempted to stop listening to the rest of Dr Ryder's medical-sounding words, but she can't risk putting a foot wrong. She can't give herself more ammunition to blame herself later, if history repeats itself. She listens as if her life depends on it.

He tells her to be cautiously optimistic, that the worst of her odds were in a success implantation, which has happened. He says she will be closely monitored, since she's previously suffered a miscarriage, but that she should try to keep going as normal and not to worry.

"But how can I not worry," she says, "when I know what can happen?"

Dr Ryder looks sympathetic. "I'm afraid we must still leave certain things in the hands of God, whatever you perceive him to be, Prime Minister. This will either happen, or it won't. I'd be lying if I promised you otherwise."

It's annoying, and she hates leaving things in the hands of _God_. She'd rather leave them in her own hands, or at a push the hands of the least incompetent of her underlings. But if Dr Ryder, whom they're paying handsomely to tell them as close to what they want to hear as possible, can't give them more than that, she knows she won't get it anywhere else.

Dr Ryder explains that she will have her first ultrasound in six weeks to find out how many of the embryos have taken.

"What?" she asks stupidly. Dr Ryder smiles patiently.

"Multiple viable embryos were transferred in the procedure, Ms Montague. Three, in fact. We therefore need to establish how many of those have implanted in your current pregnancy."

Julia turns to David to exchange a look of bewilderment. It's not that she didn't know that's what they were doing; obviously the doctors explained everything at least four times as they were doing it, but somehow it never quite registered that three embryos might in fact mean three babies. She had been so focused on the implausibility of having just one, that she never considered outcomes other than zero or one. How binary of her, she thinks, and wonders if her life is some great cosmic joke where everything has to be in outrageous extremes.

They leave the clinic a bit stunned and a lot relieved. David doesn't seem willing to let go of her hand and she is quite happy to let him hold it all the way home, where she wraps her arms around his neck and breathes in this moment, a tiny tentative step of hope after all seemed lost.

"David, you might have five children by the end of this," she says, just for the absurdity of it. He pulls back, alarmed and swallows hard.

"Well, love, I hope the state budget stretches to extremely good childcare," he says, and she laughs. And laughs more, because she doesn't know when the next time she'll cry will be, and she dreads it might be soon. 

As she falls asleep next to him that night, knowing that there is somewhere between three and five lives in the room in that moment, she can do nothing but throw herself into the abyss of fate, hoping that someone out there hears her plea to keep safe whatever little lives are currently clinging so tentatively to her.

....

Julia starts to think she might now have a better understanding now of what it feels like to walk across a minefield.

It sounds morbid, and more than a bit overdramatic, but the sense of gnawing fear and heightened awareness she has every single day of the next four weeks makes her feel sick to her stomach unless she distracts herself well enough.

Even more sick than the actual morning sickness, which is just as persistent as she remembers. She has to keep a bin by her desk at all times in case she doesn't make it to the bathroom, and she's extremely offended by the fact that her sickness does not confine itself to the morning.

"It's in the bloody title," she snaps at David when she emerges, pallid and annoyed, from the bathroom yet again that night. "Why is it doing this at eight-thirty in the evening?"

But in a way, she sort of likes it. Perhaps like is the wrong word, but at least it's a reminder that this is still happening, is still a viable reality. Julia Montague is not out of the game yet, despite her advancing years, and the unkind headlines the papers still run about her stoicism and lack of feeling. 

She gets so anxious in the days leading up to the six-week mark where she lost their last pregnancy that she can't sleep, and since David always wakes up when she leaves the bed (old habits die hard and he can't help but be constantly aware of her movements), he turns into an insomniac too.

"Love, you've got to get some sleep," he tells her gently at three-thirty in the morning. He's bleary-eyed and only wearing boxers, but he sits out with her in the chilly living room anyway. It's getting on to mid-April but they’re in the middle of a cold snap and the draught is noticeable.

"I can't," she mutters. "Every time I try I think it’s going to happen again," she says. “I have to be awake to make sure nothing happens.” It defies logic, because she knows perfectly well that she can do nothing, but he understands that sentiment all too well. So instead of protesting, he nods and fetches their quilt and lays with her on the couch instead, wrapped up in a cocoon that's just tender enough to soothe her jangled nerves. He nods off again after some time, and she eventually manages a thin doze too until it's suddenly time to get up anyway.

The Daily Mail comments on her increasingly visible eye-bags with relish. Naturally, according to its esteemed editors, the only conclusion that can be drawn is of course that the Prime Minister, 42, is having entirely too much hot late-night sex with her former PPO, David Budd, 34 (of course, they have to mention their respective ages, every time).

None of this can touch her though when she realises she has made it safely past the six-week mark and her hCG levels are still rising, and there is no blood, no pain and no reason to doubt that her baby-slash-babies are still safe and well within her. She and David quietly toast the victory, only with a geriatric cup of tea for each of them since the smell of alcohol still makes her stomach turn, and so he's given it up in solidarity with her.

To her dismay, she has to go to the eight-week ultrasound alone, because David's been held at work racing to save the life of a woman whose terror cell husband is in possession of an illegal firearm and has locked her in his HGV. She considers rescheduling the whole thing, partly out of care for him and his desire to be part of this, and partly (maybe mostly) because she's completely terrified to go without him in case something terrible happens.

In the end though he tells her to go when he calls her from his office to apologise for not able to come.

"Please, Julia, keep the appointment," he says. "I know how much you need to know, and to be honest, I don't think I can bear any more waiting either."

So she goes, and waits nervously to be called from the waiting room. The sonographer smiles and asks her all the expected questions, such as whether it’s her first baby. That turns out to be a harder question than it seems, so Julia just says yes to avoid having to talk about her loss, and accepts the woman’s kind words of encouragement.

The sonographer studies the screen.

Julia’s heart thumps in her chest. She wishes she had David’s hand in hers.

…..

He staggers in the door near to midnight that evening, crisis finally averted, and she hears him curse as he almost falls over the doormat in his haste to get in.

She is waiting up for him, sitting in the window seat and silhouetted against the window, which she is staring through pensively. The curtain is pulled back and bright moonlight is flooding the room.

"Julia?" he calls, and she hears the thud of his shoes landing somewhere careless. "Love?" he pads into the living room and flicks the main light on, making them both blink in the sudden bright. He hurries over, dread and anticipation and concern etched into every feature when he takes in her sombre posture against the window. She looks across at him.

"Julia, what happened? You didn't answer any of my calls, I've been going out of my mind worrying about you-"

"I didn't want to tell you over the phone," she cuts in quickly, putting her hand up. She sits up, sets her now cold cup of tea on the side. He waits, blue eyes intense and searching.

"Is... is it bad news?" he asks quietly. She can see him preparing himself for the worst.

"Twins," she says abruptly. He stares dumbly at her.

"What?" he says, and gets halfway to saying a few words before he leans heavily on the back of the couch in front her, stunned.

"It's twins," she says, and a shy, desperately joyous smile spreads across her face. "They're both fine. Normal, even."

He lets out a short laugh of disbelief, running his hand through his hair.

"My God, Julia, you could have put me out of my misery, I thought- I thought..."

"I know," she says quickly, reaching for him. She holds his hands in hers and drops her head to kiss them. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't put it in a text, David, and I needed some time to..." She gestures vaguely, not sure exactly what to call it. It's not brooding, exactly, and nor is it celebration. It's somewhere in between; it's processing the realisation that she might just get everything she's been longing for, while acknowledging that they are by no means out of the woods yet.

He nods and grasps her hands and embraces her, and then he leads her to bed and they are both so tired it's all they can do to shed their clothes and fall in next to one another, sharing the moment of complete intimacy and candour. He presses her back to his front and wraps one arm closely around her belly, resting where their two tiny babies are beginning to form.

As she drifts asleep she is soothed by the solid weight of him; no longer her bodyguard out in the real world but in here, she suspects he always will be. 

.....

It turns out to be slow going, being pregnant. Well, slow, but also a whirlwind of chaos and the unknown, particularly so when you're also the Prime Minister of a major European (ish) country. She doesn't think she's ever been more tired in her life, not even when she was campaigning for her first constituency, or fighting a victorious election campaign, or indeed dodging various attempts on her life.

At thirteen weeks she first starts to feel the protrusion, and gets David to confirm that yes, it definitely feels like a bump and no, he didn't think it was there before.

She starts to find it hard to button most of her trousers but she's extremely reluctant to buy anything new. Not yet, not when she's still so tense that it will all come crashing down around them if she does anything that gives the universe reason to think she's getting cocky, getting sure that this will happen for her.

Eventually, though, David gets sick of her cursing and throwing half the contents of the wardrobe across the room every morning when she tries to get dressed and he tells her in no uncertain terms that they are going to get her maternity clothes at the weekend.

Julia wrinkles her nose, but even she agrees that it's probably not appropriate for the Prime Minister to show up in tracksuit bottoms, which at this rate will be all that she can squeeze into by next Monday. She doesn't actually subject him to the process of acquiring a new wardrobe and quietly goes out to buy a few new suits with more room around the middle. Hopefully, she thinks, everyone present at the tailor would merely assume she had been overindulgent.

After some hesitation, she goes into a mother-and-baby shop afterwards, and dithers over buying stretchy trousers and a maternity support. She doesn’t dare let herself look at the baby clothes, lest she succumb to the unbearable temptation of tiny knitted boots and soft white hats. It would, she thinks, be a step too far in tempting fate. 

At fifteen weeks, the lid on the press blows off in spectacular fashion.

There's a roaring article on PM Julia Montague's secret baby hopes, and an anonymous source confirms that she has had "a successful round of IVF treatment in a well-known London clinic".

"Who the fuck told?" she snarls at Dr Ryder like a crouching panther, and he is cowering nervously behind his desk. David is silent and threatening behind her.

"Prime Minister, I'm awfully sorry, but I simply don't- the leak could have been from anyone who knows, it's not- not…"

"Approximately _six_ people were aware of the fact that we have ever set foot in this clinic. _Three_ of them are in this room, _one_ has been vetted by the entire secret service and the other two work for you. I think we can safely assume David and I didn't sell our own story, and I’m _just about_ willing to believe you didn’t either, so it’s up to _you_ to figure out which of the money grabbing little cretins in this clinic was responsible for this.”  

Dr Ryder is sweating and he can only apologise and apologise. It’s either the sonographer or the lab technician, he babbles, and he’ll look into it, he promises. Eventually David takes pity on the man and gently grasps Julia's elbow, so reluctantly she draws her final vicious put down to a close and lets him turn her away.

"But if _anything_ else gets out, doctor, you can be sure you'll be seeing us again," he says quietly over his shoulder. "And then the Prime Minister can do whatever the hell she likes to you."

Julia takes deep breaths as they leave the clinic. Her anger is visceral but she is quite sure it's justified. She would always have had to deal with the nightmare of the country finding out, but she’s furious that it’s come so early, that a few more months of peace and quiet have been denied to her.

"No one gave a fuck when David bloody Cameron had his youngest in office, did they?" she snarls at the unfortunate undersecretary who tries to congratulate her in the corridor.

Roger is a predictable nightmare. When she first crosses paths with him she is automatically on edge, but he outdoes himself this time, handing her a copy of the Sun, which she later wonders whether he’s actually been carrying around for the past three days just in case he runs into her. _Julia's £8,000 battle to become a mum with toyboy lover_ , screams the front page.

"Well, well," Roger says slickly. "So sleeping with the help didn't do the trick, then, Julia? Dipping into public funds to fuel your midlife crisis. Sad even by your standards, I must say."

There's a lot that she wants to say to him, something furious along the lines of wondering whether he actually _has_ balls under all that ego and hair gel, but she knows him. He's doing this because he's already rattled; he is the humiliated ex-husband whose baby she certainly never wanted to have, and she is standing before him as the Prime Minister happy with a younger man and blooming with his child. Roger is no longer chief whip, he's certainly not in her cabinet, and his political star is largely considered all but burnt out.

So she smiles pityingly instead, running a hand over the gentle swell of her belly. It works, and Roger looks away sharply, a muscle leaping in his jaw as the corners of his mouth turn firmly down.

"Is that envy I see, Roger? It doesn't suit you, but then neither do most emotions. Though I suppose it’s reassuring to know you have any after all."

"Have you any idea what a joke you are?" Roger sneers, lashing out as he always does when his pride is hurt. "A woman your age cavorting with a walking muscle like your pet monkey, trying to persuade herself she's still young enough. Only, it turns out you're not, are you?"

For a moment Julia says nothing, but her smile doesn't slip once. "I heard David's got your number already," she says. "I'd be careful. He's quite protective of us."

She walks past him with her shoulders back and her coat conveniently open so her expanding midsection, and in fact expanding bosom, are clearly on display, leaving her ex-husband gnashing his teeth like the villain she's always suspected he is.

Unfortunately, nothing she can do will make the press storm go away. It becomes hard to do her job because everyone keeps making assumptions about her ability, and desire, to continue working. Her cabinet starts trying to divide her workload between itself without her say so and she goes ballistic one evening when the education minister asks her if she'd like him to take over the speech at the International Business Forum she's been working on for months so she has more time to rest.

"If you wouldn't say it to a man who's expecting a child, _do not say it to me_ ," she snaps, before snatching her briefcase up and exiting before she decides to fire the lot of them. As it happens, she actually _would_ quite like more time to rest, but she knows the second she gives an inch to any of those vultures they'll be all over her like she's roadkill before the month is out.

Interviews become extremely trying too, and she is forced to deliver the iciest of stares on Andrew Marr when he asks her on air when her due date is.

"Why don't we try for some questions which are actually relevant to my plans for closer financial regulation," she says sweetly, while firing a look she hopes may actually one day be able to kill at him.

David is livid at how she is being treated, and in the end she has to order him to stop going anywhere near the newsagent or the supermarket because it only incenses him. She also installs some kind of parental filter on his phone so he's not allowed to look at the tabloids on there either.

She even starts to long for the private anxiety of a few weeks ago; even though she was in terror of suffering another miscarriage at least it was private anxiety. Now everyone and their dog knows she is in the early stages of pregnancy and if anything goes wrong, the whole world is going to have to know about that too. The only saving grace is that no one's clocked it's twins yet, and she prays it stays that way. Only she, David, the sonographer (whose name has been cleared of the press leak) and Dr Ryder himself know about that so the hit list would be fairly short if that news did get out.

"I'm worried about you," David tells her as he strokes her back in bed that night. "All this stress can't be good for you, or the little ones."

"Not like I can just turn it off, David," she sighs. "Perhaps my environment minister will find another underage illegal immigrant to employ and shag on public transport. That might take the heat off."

"We should get away," he says sleepily. She looks up at him from her usual spot on his chest and smiles.

"Yes, unfortunately it's not generally so easy for me to up and leave at short notice," she says. "As much as I'd like to flee the country."

"Mmm," he says. "You've got a week blocked out in two weeks."

She looks at him. "Did you break into my phone again?" she says, not quite crossly enough for the breach of protocol it is. "And that week is supposed to be clear so I can go to Chequers and blast through the wretched budget with-"

"Wrong," says David, putting his finger over her lips. "It's clear so we can go to the south of France where no one cares that Julia Montague, 42, is having a baby."

It's tempting. And when it becomes apparent that the press isn't going to stop running with the juiciest political soap opera since Squidgygate she gets fed up.

"Let's go," she says bitterly, a few days later. "I've got Peter on the budget. I need a holiday."

...

At sixteen weeks there's absolutely no doubt Julia is pregnant. She's wandering around the house one day in leggings and a vest and David suddenly stops in his tracks.

"Jesus," he says, staring at her stomach. "That came out of nowhere."

"And these are the observational powers of a highly trained police officer," she says dryly. "Perhaps it's rather for the best that Gavin does my security now after all."

He looks mock offended as he sidles up to her. He drops his head and kisses down her jaw before he finds her mouth, and they tussle for dominance in their kiss like they always do.

"I don't think Gavin's ever been as much fun as I was," he murmurs as he strips the leggings off her, pausing only to stroke her rounded belly before he lifts her (she wonders when he'll stop being able to do that) into the countertop.

"Well, keep this up and I shan't have to see if he's capable of it," she teases, helping him drag his belt off. He bites down on her bottom lip in punishment, and she sighs into his mouth when he's finally pushing into her, setting her blood to singing and her heart to racing in a staccato beat.

Afterwards, she wonders aloud when she'll be too big for hot middle-of-the-day sex and he laughs at her and says they'll get her a harness, or maybe a swing. She throws a tea towel at him as she heads for the shower, stark naked.

They're used to the regular check-ups by now, and she has even started to relax slightly about them. They had one scan at eight weeks, another at twelve, then sixteen weeks, and each one has come back without any red flags. 

They find out they're having a girl and a boy, and they are speechless with their happiness. They start to argue over names.

.....

When twenty weeks comes around Julia even feels relaxed enough to flick through her work emails in the car instead of sitting in tense silence catastrophising like she usually does.

"Okay, love?" David asks, opening the door for her when they get to the clinic. She smiles at him and squeezes his hand. They've managed to keep the appointment under wraps by setting up several decoy appointments in different clinics at different times, so the press are mercifully absent. They slip inside and wait their turn, and Julia gets herself comfortable for the now-familiar process of her ultrasound.

This time, though, the sonographer takes her time and for the first time in some weeks Julia feels a jolt of icy fear run through her. The sonographer smiles and excuses herself from the room.

Julia meets David's eyes, and he smiles reassuringly and doesn't say anything, but she can tell he's afraid too.

Dr Ryder comes in with the sonographer and they study the image carefully, while Julia's palms grow increasingly clammy and she watches with fearful eyes.

The sonographer quietly exits the room.

Dr Ryder concludes the ultrasound and looks between David and Julia for a loaded moment.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "She thinks that maybe one day she might speak of it, to remind everyone that terrible choices are made, and sometimes this world’s justice is swift and brutal."

At sixteen weeks, it had been mentioned that the boy twin was smaller than expected, but there had been no indication that he would fail to grow.

Unfortunately, now at twenty weeks the ultrasound is showing his growth has fallen even further behind, and his head size is currently almost two weeks behind where it ought to be. Worse, Dr Ryder's quiet assessment is that he has developed abnormalities that are, he believes, likely to be _incompatible with life_ _on delivery,_ should he make it that far.

Julia's tears are silent, and she turns her face away from the damning screen which should have shown her growing blessings, but instead reveals her latest loss.

David asks, shakily, what this means, and what about the other twin, their daughter.

"She is slightly smaller than average but safely within a healthy range," Dr Ryder replies. "But," he says, and he folds his hands. Julia takes in a breath, knowing the signs of a gentle man about to deliver another blow. "At present, the likelihood is that your daughter is losing resources to support your son, and there is a risk that waiting for nature to take its course could risk losing both babies."

He gives them a moment to take it in and she wishes he hadn't. She looks at him with utter horror, and shakes her head futilely as she realises what he is about to say.

"In my opinion a selective termination would give the best chance of a healthy delivery of one baby."

David covers his mouth with his hand and Julia slumps back on the bed, feeling the achingly familiar swell of rage and grief rise within her. _'You can't have him'_ , she wants to scream at the universe which threatens to take her precious son from her. _'Not again. Not my boy_.'

But even as she thinks this she knows already in her heart of hearts what she will do. She will not gamble on the life of her daughter, who has a chance at life, for the sake of avoiding her own guilt at condemning her son. This is who she is, who she always has been: the woman who makes hard choices for the best outcome, even when the choice is ugly and bloody and imperfect. She wonders how history will condemn her, with this latest innocent death just the latest in her long and chequered voting record.

David is devastated. He breaks down, and shakes his head, gets up and sits down. Dr Ryder gives them time alone to process what he has said. He estimates an eighty percent chance the girl will die too if the boy remains in the womb with her, the chances of an extremely early birth too high to give her a fighting chance. He also estimates a five percent chance both babies will die if they terminate the sick child. Julia wants to ask for the third option where both children get to live and she doesn't have to be the executioner for one or both of her children. It is not offered.

"We'll get a second opinion," David says, but his eyes are wet with tears and they both know that no one on earth is going to give them a better answer. Their boy was never meant to live and now he demands only one kindness from them, a final act to spare two innocents a terrible fate.

They get the second opinion anyway, urgently the next day. Julia throws all caution about the press to the wind and simply makes the appointment with another highly lauded physician, but she is not surprised when the same news is delivered.

"I'm awfully sorry," says the doctor, a bespectacled redhead with a matter of fact manner that Julia appreciates. "But I recommend terminating the male foetus. His life would only ever be short and painful, while the female has every chance of a healthy delivery, provided she makes it close enough to term."

She says it brusquely, like it’s an obvious choice, and maybe it is.

But David doesn't want to do it. Julia knows him; he is all protective instinct and he wants to save everyone, always. He is not made for tough decisions. His compassion is one of the things that draws her to him, but her heart sinks when she realises that he cannot bring himself to say yes, they should kill their son to clear the way for their daughter.

"He might live," he says to her, agonised. "What if we do this and he could have lived? We'd be murdering our son."

Julia is sympathetic but truthfully, she is not moved. She wonders if that makes her callous, a woman who accepts the necessity of murder. She wonders if she really characterises this as murder, or whether in her mind this is an act of absolution to spare them two innocent deaths instead of one.

"We haven't got a choice," she tells him flatly. "Not really. Our son is already beyond help. Our daughter we can save. I don't see that there's any question about it."

David looks at her, appalled by her harshness. Shakes his head and leaves the room. She cries exhausted tears when he does, slamming the door, and she lies there cradling her belly, perhaps the final time she'll get to cradle her tiny son while he lives.

She is still lying there with tear-tracks dried on her cheeks when he walks back in and she looks up tiredly, wondering if he’s truly going to oppose her on this. But the look in his eyes is grief-stricken and penitent.

“I know we have to do it,” he says brokenly. “I just didn’t want to have to be the one who holds the gun. Because you never get over that, you never stop wondering if it makes you a murderer.”

She looks at him and nods and fresh tears flow from her eyes. He sits beside her and holds her, but together they’re going to have to pull that trigger, and face the consequences hand in hand.

.....

At twenty-four weeks it's clear their son's sacrifice has saved his sister. She starts to kick and at the ultrasound it's clear that she is thriving.

"He gave us this," murmurs David, as they watch their one surviving baby move on-screen. Julia clasps his hand tightly. She feels like she is hanging on to this by the tiniest thread, her hopes resting on that tiny surviving child. To lose her too might just break her.

No one gets wind of the fact that she was having twins, and now she's not. She thinks that maybe one day she might speak of it, might raise her son's memory to remind everyone that terrible choices are made, and sometimes this world’s justice is swift and brutal. But not yet; for now, she can only keep the son she never had privately in her heart, where she thinks of him with a painful ache and wonders if he'd forgive her.

David has booked extra sessions with his therapist. She looks up, alarmed, when he tells her.

"No, don't think the worst," he tells her quickly. "I'm not about to fall off a cliff. I just think it's a good idea, what with everything..." he tails off, fiddling with a cushion on the couch. "Prevention before cure, I suppose."

She is so moved then by his courage that she can't speak, and for some reason seeing his willingness to accept his own vulnerability makes her desire him more desperately than before. She supposes bravery has always impressed her. He is confused and amused when she crosses the room and all but mounts him there and then, but no less willing to respond to her advances. They thoroughly defile the number 10 couch, and also the coffee table for good measure. But it does become rather apparent to her that she's becoming extremely graceless, and the vigorous and inventive positions they're usually more than capable of are firmly out of reach.

"You'll just have to play the submissive wife for once and lie there thinking of England," he says, when they surrender and move themselves to the comfort and all-round support of the bed.

“I always think of England,” she says primly. “I’m the Prime Minister.”

He laughs for a while after that one. "It's too bad I'm Scottish," he says. 

Suddenly, she feels the fluttering of their child inside her, and basks in the relief of knowing that she's alive in there.

"Feel," she instructs, and David presses his hand to her belly and his face to her cheek as he soaks in the proof that their daughter carries on her fight against the odds.

.....

The third trimester begins and Julia is large. She has been slim all her life and she finds the sudden unwieldiness of her new self irritating. Dropping anything is the start of a gargantuan struggle to retrieve it and she has to remember not to turn around sharply anymore, lest she whack her protruding belly into whoever is with her. She learns this from doing just that to Rob, leading to the most awkward and embarrassing cringing she has ever seen a grown man perform.

They still haven't pinned down names yet. Julia is determined that their son will still have one that they carefully pick out, even if he will never be able to hear them use it. 

In the end they settle on Matthew, for their little lost baby boy. Their book says the name means gift from God, which makes David raise his eyebrows when she points at it. But for whatever reason she feels like it's right. Their son _was_ a gift, however short the time they had him, and he continues to be a gift in the life of his healthy sister in whose name he died to spare.  
  
His sister whose name his parents drive each other to exasperation over. David vetoes Elizabeth because it's too stuffy, and Julia puts her foot down on Daisy for being a cow's name. And so they sigh and frown and shake their heads through Amy, Bella, Camilla, Delilah, Emma and Francesca and three dozen more too. None of them seem to fit right.   
  
In the end Julia slams the book shut and goes to help herself to some more lemon curd, which she has never in her life enjoyed before but in recent weeks has developed an unhealthy obsession with.  
  
"She'll just have to be the Bump for the rest of her life," David shrugs. Julia rolls her eyes and spoons more curd, pondering.  
  
She plans to work all the way up to the birth, and it makes for interesting meetings with certain other world leaders over the weeks. Somehow she doesn't think the Qatari emir quite knew what he was walking into, since a democratically-elected heavily pregnant female Prime Minister is about as far from his world as can be, but to be fair the visit isn't too bad and he congratulates her politely at the end of it. It's actually the American delegation which gives her the most grief, making eye-watering comments about the difficulty of combining motherhood with _real_ work and she has to aggressively hold her tongue so as not to create a serious international crisis which her country definitely doesn't need right now.   
  
On the upside, she becomes a bit of a feminist icon in the global press. Once everyone moves past the delightfully salacious headline of her being pregnant by her former PPO, the world realises it's quite impressive that she's juggling the top job while being pregnant and she's not showing any signs of giving it up. Women all around the globe seize upon her as the ultimate career woman, though she thinks it's probably good that they don't see her go home threatening to quit almost every night because she's sick and tired of being enormous and sore all over from walking around Westminster in low heels and maternity pants.   
  
At twenty-eight weeks they find themselves sitting on the couch in number ten; the four of them that is. They've got Ella and Charlie for the weekend and they're sitting all in a row, and David's got the baby book open with one kid on either side of him, each of them shouting out suggestions as he turns the page.   
  
"No, Charlie, we aren't going to call the baby Wallace," he says. "Fine Scottish name though it might be." He leafs through to the girls' section hastily.   
  
"What about... Garnet," says Ella, reading a name at random. Julia wrinkles her nose over Charlie's head. _Sounds like a stripper_ , she mouths at David.   
  
"Yeah, no, sweetheart, I'm going to have to veto that one as well," he says, catching Julia's eye and trying not to laugh.   
  
"Why not?" demands Ella indignantly.   
  
"I don't think Garnet Montague's got that good a ring to it, I'm afraid," says David. Julia's eyes fly up from the novel she's been idly flicking through for the last half hour. She looks at David questioningly, but he's preoccupied with helping Ella to pronounce 'Gertrude', and doesn't see. She's startled by his assumption the baby will have _her_ name, not his, like these two kids on the couch, and she wonders where that came from. She also wonders whether that would be what she wants, and rubs her belly pensively as the baby flutters against her, maybe trying to give her opinion on the matter.    
  
Later, when the children are in bed, Julia's lying across the couch with her feet in David's lap and he's rubbing one of her feet gently while reading the news on his phone with the other.   
  
"Why'd you say Montague earlier?" she asks suddenly, and her lack of lead in is no surprise at all to him by now. He takes a moment to unravel her words and looks at her in mild surprise.  
  
"Oh," he says. "I didn't even really think about it. It just came out."  
  
"But don't you think of the baby as yours?" Julia demands, leaning up.   
  
"Don’t be daft. Of course I do," David says, slapping the foot in his lap gently. "It's not that at all. I just... I don't know, I suppose it feels like you deserve to give her your name, after everything you've been through for this."   
  
Julia smiles and rolls her eyes, because trust him to be unintentionally gallant over this of all things. "Well I think you've been there for all of it too, David," she says. "And what if I want to give her your name?"   
  
David puts his phone down and digs his thumbs into her tired and aching arches, making her groan at the abrupt pleasure-pain.   
  
"Then of course you can," he says. "I'm not too worried about what last name she has, Julia, I'm worried that she's going to end up as Gertrude or Garnet because we can't pick something. Preferably from this century."  
  
Julia laughs, and reaches over for the baby names book. It's still open on Ella's page halfway through the Gs, and Julia turns the page slowly. Her eyes flick down the page and land on one, midway down the column. She frowns.   
  
"David," she says. He looks up. She turns the book around and taps on the page.   
  
He scans and sees what she's pointing at, and a smile spreads across his face. He looks at her warmly.   
  
"Yeah, love, that might just be the one."  
  
She turns the book back around.   
  
" _Grace. From the Old English word, which originally comes from the Latin_ gratia _meaning "thanks"_."  


.....

  
She dreams that she's back in the car with bullets bouncing off the roof and Terry's blood making the air reek of iron and salt and death. Only this time she's pregnant, and her fears are not for herself but for the unborn baby she's fought so hard to protect, the baby someone's now trying to take from her. And she's alone, so alone, with no strong hand held in hers.   
  
She wakes up gasping and jerking and David's awake in an instant, reaching for her protectively but ready to leap out of bed and defend them in the next heartbeat. He realises what's going on quickly, and she hears him let his own panic subside in a few ragged breaths.   
  
"It's all right, love," he says tenderly, easing back down next to her while she tries to slow her frantic breathing and regain her composure. He gets up and fetches a cool flannel from the bathroom, and wipes her forehead and cheeks which are streaked with tears. She lies back on the pillows and reassures herself that their baby is safe, cared for and protected from the demons which only exist inside her head.  
  
"Was it St Matthew's? Or Thornton Circus?" David asks softly. Julia swallows.   
  
"Thornton. But I was pregnant. And you weren't there to save the day," she says, trying for humour but it falls flat.   
  
"Oh, love," he says, gently brushing her hair back. He doesn't say anything else, because he knows she knows it's not real, that it's just a dream, and she's as safe and well as she's ever been. He knows it just takes time for the terror to subside, to regain a grasp of reality after being in the gaping void of dark imaginings. He's been there more times than either of them can count.   
  
So he holds her until she stops shaking and encircles her completely in his arms and links his hands with hers until she stops quaking. She can tell by his breathing that he’s staying awake until he knows she’s asleep, and she squeezes his hands gratefully. Wrapped up in his embrace, she feels safe enough to try to sleep some more before she has to get up and deliver an address with the Japanese prime minister first thing in the morning.

She gives it with cool confidence and no one would ever know she'd been shaking with terror only a few hours before.   
  
Thirty weeks comes and goes. The frequent scans they have show no unexpected change, no more heart-rending decisions, though Dr Ryder's team has to be careful about what they show on-screen. Julia takes to brooding on the fact that she will still have to deliver both of her twins, will have to suffer a final goodbye to little Matthew, and she can't decide whether she wants to see him afterwards or not. She's been asked to state her wishes on that. She knows it will be devastating if she sees him but it doesn't feel right to let him go unnoticed by his mother, to let him be hastened away, not when he was so, so wanted.   
  
She thinks she still has time to prepare and think on it, and she does, but not as much as she thinks.   
  
At thirty-one weeks and one day, Julia's water breaks in the car to Westminster in the morning.   
  
"Just get him there, and no-one has to get hurt," Julia grinds out, her teeth clenched and clutching the edge of her seat in the BMW. Tony has changed course and is driving double-quick to Chelsea and Westminster hospital where Julia is supposed to be giving birth. Only, in five weeks' time.   
  
David's not answering his phone and it's giving Julia immense cause for fury, as if his unresponsiveness is a deliberate attempt to make her life as stressful as it can possibly be.    
  
But mostly, she is just afraid that it's too, too soon.  
  
The doctors have talked her through this outcome several times. Given the fact that this is a multiple pregnancy, albeit with one deceased twin, the risks of premature labour were always higher. And thirty-one weeks is not so terrible; it’s well beyond the twenty-something danger zone Dr Ryder thought they might be facing. But Julia had hoped that they would be spared yet another heart-stopping rollercoaster where fate is playing Russian roulette with their baby's life.  
  
"It's all right, Ma'am," says Gavin in his not-Scottish voice. "We'll have you to the hospital in no time."  
  
Her aide in the backup car has been informed. There will be no Prime Minister's Questions today, and Julia thinks she had better just be let off her duties for once without anyone pissing and moaning about her in the press, but she has no doubt someone will have something opportunistic to say about it.   
  
She has bigger things to think about right now, and she all but screams at Gavin to get a hold of David to make sure he's there at the hospital to suffer this with her, because she is _not_ willing to do it by herself.   
  
Ten minutes later, on the sixth time of calling, he finally picks up.  
  
"PS Budd," says Gavin, sounding mightily relieved. "PS Goodman. I'm in the car with the Prime Minister, we're on the way to Chelsea and Westminster-"  
  
He doesn't get anything else out before there's an immediate, frantic buzzing from David's end which makes Gavin wince and lift the phone away from his ear.   
  
"Yes, yes, she is- no," he says, trying to cut into David's volley. "No, Sarge, I'm it's quite all right-"  
  
Julia endures a vicious contraction, and Gavin's attention is diverted.   
  
"Here - we'll have to see you at the hospital, Sarge, I've got to go," he says quickly into his phone and hangs up on David before he can yell anything else. Julia stutters a litany of curses at the traffic which is slowing her route to the hospital, and therefore the holy grail of strong pain relief and a safe white bed.   
  
When they finally make it she is wheeled to a private room in the maternity wing. David, as it turns out, has beaten them there, by virtue of hijacking a police motorbike and hightailing it to the hospital in defiance of a hefty charge sheet of traffic offences. He's pacing agitatedly, spinning around when she's finally brought in and helped onto the bed.   
  
"I knew you were efficient but this is outdoing yourself, love," he says, taking up his place at the head of the bed with her. She feels her stress levels drop at once as he takes her hand, only to rise again as a fresh contraction sails through her.   
  
"Trust me, I spend my whole life trying and failing to keep to a schedule," she pants. "Why must this be the only time I'm ever ahead of it?"

.....

Birth.   
  
She sort of thinks she knows what it's about. The basics, at least. She's thought about what it would be like a lot of times over the years. Moments of idle curiosity, more than seriously considering it as something she might do.   
  
Ironically, she hasn't really thought too much about it in all the time she's actually been pregnant. She's been extremely poor at keeping up with her antenatal classes. It's a little awkward to stroll into those when you're the Prime Minister, and anyway, she's had a country to run. Unfortunately, sending an aide in her stead hasn’t actually translated to her knowing what to do.  
  
She hasn't really asked David what it was like when Ella and Charlie were born either. It's a bit awkward, delving into the gory details of his past. She thinks that Vicky was probably much like she always is: noble and self-sacrificing in her sufferance, maybe even placid and sweetly martyred. Dimly, she tells herself not to be so unkind; she likes Vicky perfectly well, thinks she's a good mother and a real friend to David.   
  
It's just, she feels _vicious_ at the moment, a temper boiling in her as her body seemingly goes into active revolt against her. Not only is this labour much too soon, but it's absolutely utterly fucking horrible. She's not sure, but she thinks she might actually even hate David now.   
  
She glances at him and sighs, backtracking. No, she doesn’t hate him. You can't hate someone who's looking at you like that. He clutches her hand and she knows he's wishing he could take this instead of her, that he hates to be out of control when it comes to her wellbeing as much as she hates to be out of control over everything else. She squeezes back just once, a last consideration of his feelings before she is too furious with the pain to care about his comfort.  
  
It's long. Earlier it had felt like she was going to pop out a kid right there and then in the back of the BMW, but as it turns out no-one is in any hurry to come out. Five hours passes, and Julia's paler but no closer to giving birth. Then eight hours comes and goes, and it's now the evening, and she's walking - waddling - back and forth as contractions, and nurses, come and go. David has left the room twice: once to go to the bathroom, and another reluctantly to get a hot drink when the nurse gets annoyed with his badgering, and in the end Julia sides with her and tells him to bugger off so she can have some peace.  
  
At twelve hours Julia is really fed up, exhausted and in pain and pretty angry that no one is volunteering to just get the thing out of her right now, and instead keeps telling her "soon, I'm sure," in that irritating voice reserved for the sick and the incompetent. David's hair is sticking up all over the place and he looks drawn but he doesn't falter in his encouragement of her.   
  
At sixteen hours, people start telling Julia to push. 

.....

  
It's bewildering. In the end it's desperation and it's autopilot and it's messy and horrific and some things can't be unseen. She's suddenly glad David's seen atrocious crime scenes so many times, because this frankly isn't far off.  
  
At 3:17am on the first day of December, a baby girl is born.   
  
She is not born into circumstances which often come about. She's the miracle child of the Prime Minister and her bodyguard; she’s five weeks premature and she's going to be in an incubator for several more, and more than that she's one half of a pair who will never be reunited.

She's wanted and loved and her last name is Montague-Budd.   
  
And hers is a love story for the ages.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank everyone for reading and leaving comments and kudos. I really enjoyed writing this one, and found I got to know the characters much better through it (my version of them anyway). 
> 
> I'll admit that initially, this was supposed to end with Julia miscarrying, and her and David moving on, accepting that they won't have children and coming to terms with it. My shipper heart was weak, though, and I couldn't not give them this - not when they've already been through so much. 
> 
> I've tried to keep the medical aspects realistic, though I am in no way an expert. I was inspired by the many moving accounts of people's experiences with these kinds of situation I read while researching. There are some extremely brave people out there.
> 
> I'll also admit there's a temptation to carry on, to keep on writing through the rest of their lives as a family, but I suspect that would really be taking it beyond the point of the story.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me all this way!


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